


Not All Witches Live in Salem

by teamfreetitan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Based on a Tumblr Post, Familiars, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Katsuki Yuuri-centric, M/M, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Witches, more to come as I update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 06:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreetitan/pseuds/teamfreetitan
Summary: The little town of Hasetsu was an ordinary town save for the fact that its inhabitants were... of the magical variety. Katsuki Yuuri was one of the witches who lived there. He was average at magic, your dime-a-dozen witch, whose magic weakened even more after the death of his familiar. Then, the most powerful witch Yuuri can name shows up. His idol, his role model, his aspiration, is in and about his hometown and family owned resort, shooting sparks from his fingers and making things spin - literally. His potions - concocted himself, he was proud to say - ensnare the senses, but he'd rather ensnare Yuuri's heart. His magic is icy, but he'll need to get Yuuri to melt to get anywhere with him.Based on hetteh-spegetteh's witch boys au!On a short hiatus; updating after I finish Roses, so sometime in October!





	Not All Witches Live in Salem

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction was based on hetteh-spegetteh's witch boys au, posted on tumblr. You can find her tumblr here:  
> hetteh-spegetteh.tumblr.com  
> You can find the witch boys tag here:  
> hetteh-spegetteh.tumblr.com/tagged/witch-boys-au  
> Thank you for letting me write this!

Yuuri Katsuki found himself in the garden of the Katsuki family residence, a traditional Japanese house in the Western coast of the country. It was a serene little place, like all of Hasetsu, really. In the middle of the area was a tiny pond, cycling water through a waterfall. Floating on the surface were four sapphire lotuses. The surrounding dirt held a plethora of plants, both common and rare, which made the ground look like a colorful fruit salad. They were sorted arbitrarily, as Yuuri didn’t need to label them to know what was what. The plants, ranging from boring mint to the explosive passion flower to the oddly shaped black cohosh, Yuuri’s personal favorite, were his pride and joy. 

Where he sat, there was dirt everywhere - his hands, his skirt, and even his face, from pushing up his glasses - as he moved a plant from a pot to the ground. It was a snapdragon plant. He had began growing this one inside, but it was now big enough for him to tuck amid the other plants. He picked up the dirt with his hands and pressed it around the remaining gap in the ground. 

Yuuri set the plant’s previous home, a cracked pot that wasn’t broken enough to discard yet, to the side. He reached for the watering can, but his hand found only air. Multitasking was one of his specialties, so he began to inspect a bromeliad leaf while he groped the air for the metal container. The lipstick colored flower in the center of the bromeliad looked intact, but its long, drooping leaves looked victim to a family of aphids. 

He reached out for the watering can again, farther, yet still came back empty-handed.

Finally, he turned his head. He  _ knew _ he filled it up, remembering levitating from the sink, so where was it? He replayed the events in his mind…

Right, it must still be on the patio where he’d picked up the snapdragon pot! He’d filled the metal can up with water, levitated it with him to the patio. He was distracted by his sister, Mari, asking him for assistance. He set down the can to help her, but never retrieved it again when he got the snapdragon pot to complete his original task. Indeed, when Yuuri looked over his shoulder at the house, he could see the watering can sitting undisturbed by the door. He was, admittedly, too lazy to get up and fetch it, so he pointed a finger at it, willed his magic into it, and brought it closer. The can floated into his hands, and he gently poured the cool liquid over the dirt housing his plants. 

Mundane magical tasks such as getting things were normal to Yuuri at this point. His family was one composed of witches, as were all the other families in Hasetsu. Regardless, still filled him with pride to complete these humdrum duties successfully. It wasn’t much, but it was still magic. 

The little city of Hasetsu, tucked away where no one who had no magic could find, was filled with simple magic, taught to young witches like normal people taught their kids to ride a bike. It was simply something you learned how to do. Like many human tasks, people had varying levels of talent when it came to these things.

Though Yuuri was a late bloomer, only successfully doing his first spell at age ten, magic was ingrained in him. It reached his core. It  _ was _ him. Even before he could practice magic, he was obsessed with magic. To Yuuri, it consumed him. His skills were quite average, but he was passionate. He read old spell books and studied potions. He looked up to powerful witches who had done things impossibly important to the witching community - like Victor Nikiforov. In school, he was a relatively good student, soaking up what was taught him like a sponge. Even after school finished, he travelled the world to other witching communities in hope of learning something great. Or, he hoped silently, doing something great. So many great witches had started out like that.

Though he never developed a new spell or concocted a new potion using a plant he discovered in the exotic mountains of South America, he did meet Phichit, a young witch visiting Detroit, who was also in magical pursuits. 

Yuuri arose from the ground by his garden, brushing the dirt off of his flowing, black skirt. He assessed the expanse before him, deciding to leave it for the day. The plants, recently, had been weak. Immediately after the death of his familiar, Vicchan, Yuuri’s plants plummeted. He had to almost start from scratch, though some of the more powerful (and rare) ones scraped by. They were coming back stronger, but not as strong as they were. Even the new plants seemed lethargic. They needed to soak up some sun, he decided, and Yuuri had duties to attend to in his family's hot springs. 

Discarding the watering can on the porch, he grabbed his light scarf and hat. His scarf, a long beige piece of woven fabric, he wrapped around his neck once and left the end flowing behind him like an old-fashioned cape. He plopped his hat on his head, a lopsided purple thing, and grabbed his keys, tucking them in his skirt pocket. 

Witch fashion was a hodge-podge of old and modern human styles, stereotypically witchy and non conventionally witchy. It tended to lean towards the feminine variety, as most of the powerful witches of history were women. They were the celebrities of the witching world, who, by extension, dictated fashion. As some witches attempted to immigrate into human society, they adapted the fashion of skirts and posh hats. Though, obviously, their immigration was unsuccessful, (Salem witch trials, anyone?), the fashion hit the ground running and never looked back. Modern powerful witches, like Victor Nikiforov, could make a crop top, a popular non-magic trend, a flowing skirt, and a hat from the 1800s look amazing in ensemble. Luckily, some genius witch along the way decided to add pockets to the skirts, which was, in Yuuri’s mind, an improvement.

Yuuri walked down the street, shoes hitting the concrete sidewalks. Across the street, an elderly man read a novel, which levitated in midair and whose pages flipped without him moving a muscle. As he made it into town, he saw a lady holding two vials in her hands, almost neon yellow and still bubbling. In the center of the town, two kids played tag in the square, a ruleless game which included them unfairly hitting each other with muggy-leg spells or giving themselves slightly enhanced speed. Nothing too advanced, nothing harmful, nothing that didn’t wear off in a couple seconds, nothing Yuuri couldn’t do in his sleep at this point. Still, he chuckled.

He rounded corners and stopped at the Hasetsu hot springs, run by his parents. Yuuri and Mari helped out around there, despite both being adults, because it was cheaper for their parents than paying two other people. Besides, Yuuri was an adult and still living at home; it was the least he could do to help out. 

The hot springs weren’t inherently magical; they were there long before witches claimed the area as their own and sealed it off from non-magical people. But, his parents used their combined magic to make them more rejuvenating. They could cure fatigue after exhausting your powers and even strengthen them, or so they claimed. It had always worked before, but no matter how long Yuuri spent pruning in them after Vicchan’s death, his powers seemed to weaken permanently. 

Vicchan was a familiar, a tiny companion, for lack of better words. Many strong witches had familiars come to them, link themselves to them. For Yuuri, Vicchan was a poodle who had wandered into Hasetsu one afternoon and straight to Yuuri. He was fourteen. From then on, they were inseparable. Vicchan slept curled up on the foot of Yuuri’s bed and nipped at his ankles as they walked through town and floated gently near Yuuri when he helped his mom brew potions to stock in the little gift shop at the springs.

Yuuko, his childhood friend, was absolutely stoked when Yuuri received Vicchan. “Oh, Yuuri!” she gushed. “Only the strongest witches get familiars drawn to them! Which means you’re going to be super powerful, I just know it. He’s a little small still, but as your powers grow, so will he. Victor Nikiforov’s familiar is a poodle, too! They say his is the size of a bear, he’s so powerful.” Yuuri knew all this of course; he spent hours reading about Victor and studying familiars, praying he would get one one day. Yuuri was happy to let her excitement rile him up, and soon they were both hyped, little Vicchan running in circled around the pair. Vicchan was still just a puppy, but one day, Yuuko and Yuuri agreed, he would be the size of a bear, just like Victor Nikiforov’s.

Vicchan never grew past the size of a puppy, unfortunately. Yuuri loved him regardless. 

But, then he died. Yuuri awoke one morning feeling fatigued and empty. Yuuri was average at best, but that day, he felt one hundred percent human, zero percent witch. He found Vicchan curled up at the end of his bed, half transparent. Healthy familiars were almost entirely opaque, but Yuuri watched,  _ watched _ , Vicchan fade away. He cried all day and refused to leave his room. His parents didn’t find out what happened until the next day because he couldn’t find it in him to talk, get food, or leave his room.

He was still unsure what happened. Had his powers faded overnight and caused Vicchan to die, or had Vicchan died and caused his powers to fade?

Either way, he couldn’t complete basic spells for a few days. His potions boiled and evaporated away from him. His plants died. Slowly, his magic was coming back, but it was a fraction of what it was supposed to be. He could do spells and brew potions and grow plants now, but it wasn’t the same.

Magic, when you perform it, had a certain feeling to it, as individual as the person itself. For Yuuri, it had always been like a fire, warm and biting and vicious. It wasn’t just a fire, though. It felt like a hundred other things impossible to describe. His magic felt like a warm blanket, like a bonfire on the weekend with his friends, like cooking a good meal over coals, like a life source. After Vicchan’s death, as he regained his power, he could still feel a fire’s bite every time he cast a spell, but the evening bonfire and home cooked food were gone, replaced with a smokey sting.

It had been six months since Vicchan’s death. He was still recovering. 

For the time being, Yuuri took up his place behind the reception counter at the hot springs. An elderly couple came in, and he said, “Hello, Nanami-san, Akinobu-san.” They flashed their pool passes and made their way through the lobby. 

Yuuri waited for more customers, but it wasn’t busy today. In fact, it was rarely busy recently. He doodled on a piece of paper, moving the pen with his magic, not his hands, and changing the color of ink as he went, cycling through pink, purple, and blue. His drawing session was interrupted when Yuuko came in, loud, causing him to jump. Her triplets waddled in behind her. They were just old enough to start attempting some simple magic, and they were a catastrophic horde. Yuuri was proud to be the godfather.

“Yuuri!” she said, all excitement, as she had always been. Yuuri’s mind left concentration on the paper, causing the pen to swerve out of the way, messing up the drawing, before it exploded into black ink, all over the counter. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she apologized before willing away the ink.

“It’s nothing,” Yuuri said, stepping out from behind the counter to hug his friend. They hadn’t seen each other in two weeks. She was preoccupied with the kids, who were starting school soon, and running her family’s business on the other side of town. Given the way the triplets ran around in the lobby, Yuuri didn’t mind; they were a handful.

It was insane to think that his childhood friends were getting married and having kids and being successful already. Here Yuuri was, living at home, the most single person he knew, pathetically trying to do magic he was unlikely to ever achieve. But even if Yuuri pitied himself - he didn’t want to, but that’s not how emotions work - he was super proud of Yuuko. Her kids were going to be powerful some day. At least more powerful than Yuuri was.

“How are you?” Yuuko asked, pulling away. 

Yuuri shrugged. “Good, I guess. It gets boring over here sometimes. You?”

She turned around to scold one of the twins about levitating a vase that could easily be broken. “Axel, don’t touch that! We’ve been over this, you can’t just levitate random objects. No, Axel, I know you  _ can _ ,  _ clearly _ , but you  _ may _ not, or you’re grounded. No buts!” She turned back to Yuuri, laughing. “Sorry about that. Busy. I’m busy. I’m being pulled in, like, a hundred directions at once. But I figured I would drop by on our way to the store.” There was a crash behind them. “Axel! I thought I told you to  _ stop! _ ” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Maybe I shouldn’t even take them to the store. Anyway, I wanted to give you  _ this _ ,” Yuuko said, handing him a small bundle. “Just some stuff I found that I thought you might like. I should go. We should make plans to actually hang out sometime, yeah? I’ll get Takeshi to watch the kids. Call me!” With that, she turned around, cleaned up the broken glass, and herded the kids out of the hot springs, leaving Yuuri gaping with a box in his hands, barely having time to thank her.

That woman was  _ wild _ . 

Her ability to multitask was beyond him. It was impressive, Yuuri had to admit. He did miss the times before the triplets when the pair would sit and do little spells for the sake of amusement, but that was life.

While Yuuri was wasting away, doing little spells like changing the colors of ink in his pen, or making flowers dance, his friends and peers were off doing  _ real _ things.

Yuuri retreated back behind the counter, setting the bundle on the counter. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied together with twine. He pulled out the bow and unfolded the creased paper. 

On top of the stack was a bar of almond brittle, wrapped in saran wrap. Yuuko homemade her brittle, and she knew Yuuri  _ lived _ for it. Underneath was a folded up piece of paper, a newspaper article from years ago, when they were still kids. In the upper left corner was a picture of Victor Nikiforov; the picture was animated, showing him, then twenty-one (when Yuuri and Yuuko were seventeen) talking to the reporter who wrote the article. It was about the new potion he made, and Yuuri and Yuuko had drawn little hearts around the borders of the page, Yuuri in blue, Yuuko in green. Under that page was another piece of paper, this one more modern, which was a note from Yuuko, reading  _ Hi Yuuri! I made some brittle, and I thought you might like some. We haven’t made any in awhile, but it’s a timeless recipe. I found the article while cleaning out the attic. I also found the book; you probably will find more interest in it than I do. Check page 160! Love you! XOXO Yuuko _

Yuuri set those all aside, picking up a book, bound tightly with blue leather. The cover told him that it was  _ A Complete List of the Greatest Witches of All Time _ . The top could in the table of contents included Marie Laveau, known for her practice of voodoo, and Baba Yaga, not exactly “the greatest,” but a notable witch and important historical figure. Yuuri flipped to page 160 to find the chapter title staring him in the face.

_ Victor Nikiforov, the Most Successful Male Witch Since Merlin! _

Yuuri skimmed the pages, reading about Victor’s most notable contributions to the world of magic, including potions to cure loneliness and some of the most widely renowned cleaning spells. He knew everything in here, but the picture was one Yuuri hadn’t seen before, as was the interview in the end of the chapter, where Victor was asked about what  _ he _ thought his most important contribution was. 

(He “thought he made the world a little bit more comfortable for people.” What a man.)

It was always nice to go back and reiterate things like this. He could read a hundred and one articles about Victor and never grow tired of it. Victor was his idol, after all.

The note and article were slipped into the pages of the book, bookmarking page 160. Yuuri unwrapped the brittle and bit into it, breaking off sugar and almonds into his mouth. He hummed contently. Yuuko knew him so well.

* * *

 

A couple days later, Yuuri went from the house, wearing a simple navy blue skirt that reached his knees and a black t-shirt, tucked in. It was simple and comfortable and hid the little stomach he’d been putting on since Vicchan’s death. He had a basket containing roses, just the petals, no stems, some yarrow, and a sapphire locus. His mother had asked him to bring her them from his garden to use in her potions. Not only did the hot springs offer rejuvenating waters, his mother made potions to help scrounge up some more money.

It wasn’t any of the heavy stuff, like love potions, which were more destructive than helpful. It was little stuff, like easy sleep potions and nerve-calming potions and energy potions. 

“Where’s mom?” Yuuri asked, walking into the lobby. His dad stood behind the desk, writing something down. “She asked me to bring her these,” Yuuri explained, holding up the basket for emphasis.

He pointed towards the back room, where his mom made her potions.

Yuuri pushed open the door, saying, “I got them,” to his mother. He set the basket down on the table where she was stirring the base in a cauldron. 

“Thank you, dear,” she said, smiling.

“No problem,” Yuuri replied. “Need any other help?” 

Outside, Yuuri heard his dad speaking to some guest. His mom’s voice was louder, saying, “Can you grab those-” she pointed to a bowl of snail shells, “-while I stir this?” Yuuri did as requested, bringing the shells to his mom and she continued to stir. “Could you crush three, dear?” Yuuri got a mortar and ground them to bits. When his mom asked, he dumped them in the white, boiling liquid.

“Thanks, Yuuri,” she said.

* * *

 

As Yuuri walked out of the back room, he did a double take. And a triple take. And, admittedly, a quadruple take. The door slammed into his ankle as it swung shut, but the man on the other side of the counter hardly noticed. He did look past Yuuri’s dad when Yuuri made a hissing noise in response to the shooting pain up his leg. 

“Hello,” he said, voice heavily accented, directing it to Yuuri.

Yuuri’s mind felt like he was hitting the refresh page over and over, waiting because, no, surely, it was impossible that that was  _ the _ Victor Nikiforov, standing on the other side of the counter, talking to Yuuri’s father. But he didn’t wake up, so it wasn’t a dream, and his mind didn’t reveal that it was some hallucination. 

That was definitely Victor Nikiforov, in the flesh, standing there. Yuuri’s eyes went wide, and he let out a quiet, “H-Hello.”

“Here, Yuuri, show this man to his room. This is - oh, dear, one sec,” his father said as he began to look at the papers. He had never been good with names, something Yuuri had inherited from him. But this name, Yuuri knew.

“Victor Nikiforov,” Yuuri answered. 

He - Victor Nikiforov, in the flesh,  _ less than two meters away from Yuuri _ \- laughed. “Yes,” he said. 

Yuuri’s father shoved a key into his hands. “Like I said, show him to his room.” 

In a dazed stupor, Yuuri made his way around the counter, looking at the key, room 201. The hot springs wouldn’t be a real hot spring if it didn’t have a resort, right? Given its small size, its resort consisted of four rooms on the first floor, past the lobby, and eight on the second floor. And Victor Nikiforov was staying in one of them. 

On the other side of the counter, Victor let his bag levitate near him, and he smiled at Yuuri. Yuuri could only take him in. The outfit Yuuri was wearing was plain, drab, even. Victor, on the other hand, was wearing a long skirt that almost reached his ankles, embroidered with stars and planets, in hues of blue and black and purple. The kicker? It moved. The stars twinkled, and as Yuuri looked at his thigh, a shooting star zoomed across it. His shirt was plain black, skin tight, the end of it tucked under the high waist of the skirt, sleeves long and reaching halfway down his forearms. His fingers had a ring each hand - none on the ring finger, because Victor was a bachelor - and he had dangly earrings falling from his earlobes. A pert black hat topped it all off, sitting slightly lopsided atop his head of silver hair. Yuuri allowed himself enough time to take it all in, but not enough to look like he was staring.

A dog was right behind him, too. A fluffy poodle, who brought back strong memories of Vicchan. Ironic, wasn’t it, how both Yuuri and Victor had (or in Yuuri’s case, had had) poodles, and the namesake of Vicchan stood right before him. The dog was  _ not _ the size of a bear - he would have to tell Yuuko that that was all celebrity gossip when he saw her and Yuuri told her this, because she was the only person who would understand how  _ impossible _ this scenario was - but did come up to Victor’s hip.

He motioned for Victor to follow. 

“You already know mind, so what’s your name?” Victor asked. 

“Um, Katsuki Yuuri,” Yuuri answered, mounting the stairs. 

“I’m staying here for a few weeks, so I’ll probably see you around, right? You should so me some tricks some time. Oh, or show me around Hasetsu. I’m clueless. I don’t want to get lost.” Victor’s English was good, but that was to be expected. What Yuuri didn’t expect was the excited rambling. Victor reminded him of Yuuko in that sense. He spoke so quickly and with so much emotion it was hard to stay caught up.

As the words sunk in, Yuuri’s face lit up, bright red. His fingers weren’t nimble as he fumbled, trying to get the key in the lock to the room’s door. He finally got it in, twisting hard to the right and opening the door. “Okay,” he responded weakly as he handed the key to Victor.

When their fingers touched, Yuuri felt a bite of ice. He had heard that, if you touched a witch much more powerful than yourself, you could feel their magic. Yuuri had never experienced that on the giving or receiving end. But for a split second, he was blasted with coldness. It wasn’t the kind that would give you hypothermia, but where Yuuri’s magic used to be all bonfires and s’mores, Victor’s was bitter cold mornings on a reservoir, skating, and evenings cuddled up in a windowsill, watching snowfall. It seemed appropriate, in retrospect: he was Russian and even his hair looked like that of a snow prince. But it took Yuuri off guard. 

Apparently, it took Victor off guard, too, because he looked down at his fingers in amusement, saying softly, “Warm.” Their eyes met, and Yuuri’s face went red again. 

“I’ll let you get settled in, then,” he said.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Victor said, as Yuuri disappeared down the hallway. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated!


End file.
